Campaign crowds lied to PP – Wakuda

Spokesperson of former president Joyce Banda, Elias Wakuda Kamanga, has said mammoth crowds that attended People’s Party (PP) campaign meetings for the May 20 Tripartite Elections gave it false hopes of winning resoundingly.

Kamanga, legislature-elect in Kasungu, was formerly secretary-general of Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) and ditched it when Banda, the country’s first female president, came to power in 2012 after the death of Bingu wa Mutharika, the elder brother of Peter Mutharika.

He said PP is “wondering that when Malawians were coming to our presidential rallies in huge numbers were they coming to watch, to pass time or to please somebody? Because going by the numbers, one could see victory all over.”

Wakuda Kamanga : Lesson learnt that ruling party can also lose election

Kamanga, as quoted by Malawi’s flagship daily The Nation, said PP is still figuring out what might have happened to lose the elections.

“We have learnt bitter lessons, but overall the outcome has told us that a ruling party can also lose elections,” the paper quoted him.

“However, we are still figuring out what might have really happened for us to finish on third position even in the face of a massive political campaign as well as several noble projects the Joyce Banda administration had put in place,” he said.

PP still claims President Peter Mutharika and DPP were declared winners in a chaotic elections which was fraudulent.

“If you lose honourably, it makes another way of looking at elections, but if you lose with a lot of anomalies unattended to, it greatly creates anxiety and regret for the future,” Kamanga is quoted saying.

The electoral commission said Friday that Mutharika took 36.4 percent of the votes cast against Banda’s 20.2 percent.

The results showed that Banda was beaten into third place by Lazarus Chakwera of the Malawi Congress Party (MCP), who garnered 27.8 percent of the vote.

In the parliamentary race, PP got 26 seats in the 193-member National Assembly behind independents who got a total of 52 seats, DPP with 50 seats and MCP which got 48 seats.

In a statement, Banda congratulated her arch-rival Peter Mutharika for winning the country’s presidential election, whose result she had initially challenged.